This course is designed to introduce students to the concepts and critical approaches, as well as to some of the interdisciplinary methods, that are central to gender studies in the Humanities. It will achieve this by focussing on a literary text, Charlotte Bronte?s novel Jane Eyre. This text, which has been important in the development of feminist scholarship since the 1970s, has also attracted a non-academic readership, influencing media such as the popular romance and cinema. Using Jane Eyre and its extensive critical commentary as a springboard, the unit will investigate such topics as gender, representation, sexuality, race, class, madness, marriage and the law. Other texts to be studied in conjunction with the novel will include Jean Rhys?s ?prequel? to Jane Eyre, Wide Sargasso Sea, (1966) and Jane Campion?s 1992 film The Piano and Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair (2001).

Students will develop:

• an understanding of interdisciplinary humanities approaches to the study of a canonical literary text
• an understanding and familiarity with the changing interpretations of Jane Eyre over time, reflecting changing socio-political and literary-theoretical concerns
• an appreciation of the range of cinematic and dramatic adaptations of Jane Eyre, Wide Sargasso Sea and related texts
• an introduction to key texts of feminist literary criticism
• improved skills of textual analysis of literature

Tutorial participation, and written work to the value of 3000 - 3500 words (100%).

Offered in alternate years
20 hours of lectures and 12 hours of  tutorials.

A first year course to the value of 6 units in English or Gender, Sexuality and Culture or History

Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre (Broadview edition)

This course would count towards an English or Gender, Sexuality and Culture major.